Trace the westward migration and enduring influence of Black Mountain College, both its people and way of life, especially as it took root in California.
Katie Horak explores the work of stained glass artist Jane Slater Marquis, tracing how her five years at Black Mountain College as a student of Josef Albers would create the foundation for a five-decade career as an artist. This talk spotlights Marquis's early work and collaboration with fellow BMC student and architect Claude Stoller, and a career that would include collaborations with some of California’s most influential late-20th-century architects.
David Silver tells the story of how a dozen BMC students and professors left the collapsed college and moved to San Francisco, especially North Beach, where they set up bars, crash pads, art studios, poetry workshops, and the most lively literary community the world would ever see. As this talk will reveal, it is difficult to imagine the Beat Scene and San Francisco Renaissance, not to mention the countercultural movement that would follow, happening at all without Black Mountain College.
Together, these presentations reveal how one short-lived, radically experimental college continued to shape American art, poetry and community life long after its doors closed.
Katie Horak is an architectural historian and principal at Architectural Resources Group, and adjunct associate professor at USC in the School of Architecture.
David Silver is a professor and author of The Farm at Black Mountain College (Atelier Éditions and the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 2024).